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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN VOLLEYBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 22, 2014Kelly SheffieldKELLY SHEFFIELD: It was a challenging week this past week going out and playing two heavyweights. Southern Cal we fell behind. Their great server Bricio really kind of torched us early on, and we were fortunately able to settle down a little bit and had huge matches out of Dominique Thompson, Haleigh Nelson and Courtney Thomas. Those three were spectacular. The following night against Washington it was just an epic battle, two great teams going at it, playing tremendous defense, serving the heck out of the ball, and for about 90 percent of the match, it was just a slugfest back and forth. I think they got‑‑ they continued to get stronger as the match went on. I thought after a tough game 4, we gathered ourselves and went right back at them in game 5, 12:30 our time by the time that match started. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but I do know after playing both of those teams, our team was pretty fatigued on the trip back. Great weekend, great learning experience, got a lot out of the film session yesterday. We're excited about Penn State, and we've got them coming in. I've been asked to let people know that they probably want to get their tickets ahead of time because it looks like that's going to be a sellout. A great team with a lot of talent, and we're excited about being home and being able to host it. Q. How much does playing heavyweights on the road last weekend help you play a heavyweight champion Wednesday? KELLY SHEFFIELD: If we win Wednesday, it'll help us a lot. (Laughter.) If we don't, then it was a horrible idea. I don't know, here's what I told our kids yesterday, is that the most important thing right now isn't winning this part of the year. If you've got big goals at the end of the year, the most important thing is improving. Nothing can be more important than getting better. And when you're playing great teams and you come back and you watch the film and see how they're matching up and how they're preparing for you, it allows you to get back in the gym and really work on those things. And when you're playing some people that aren't going to challenge you quite as much, you're maybe not learning as much about yourself. We would have loved to have won Friday night. That would have been fun and special. The more important thing is that we take some of those lessons, some of those things that we learned and we become a better team. To me that's way more important if you've got big goals. Q. Penn State lost some big time players, mostly the front row, but they've got a core of people back and some freshmen who have stepped right in in Micha Hancock. What's your take of what you see this year versus what you faced last year? KELLY SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I keep hearing how young they are, but they probably have the most returning experience of about any team in the country. What are they, are they an experienced team or are they a young team? I don't know, but I know this: They're really talented. It's typical Penn State; powerful, aggressive, they can beat you at a lot of different positions along the net and a lot of different skill areas. Oh, yeah, and they're coached by the coach with the all‑time wins record. They're good. We're going to have to play well. You've got to do that any time that you're playing one of the best teams. But yeah, they're talented. The young kids have done a great job of stepping in. I know they're a little bit younger than what they were last year probably across the board, but when you look at the talent, there's not a dropoff in talent at all, and it might even be more talent than what they were last year. Q. Were you channeling your inner Barry Alvarez saying get your tickets now, or where did you get that from? KELLY SHEFFIELD: Diane Nordstrom has been great about doing that, but yeah, you try to learn from some of the best around, and if you're not learning from Coach Alvarez, I don't know what you're doing around here. Q. In the sport of volleyball, though, what sort of role can a home crowd play? KELLY SHEFFIELD: It's a momentum sport, and it's a confidence sport. It's huge. It's important not only to get big crowds, but it's important for those crowds to feel like they're an active part in things, that they're in the battle with you. Certainly I think it's more fun as a fan, and I think it's more fun as a participant if the crowd is into it. You know, I think our team, like I said last week, I think they enjoy going on the road and playing in front of hostile crowds, but I think how could you not love playing in the fieldhouse, especially when that fieldhouse is rocking. Our first match here against Miami we had a great student crowd, and we're hoping that they're going to come out on Wednesday night. I know schoolwork is very important to the students here at the University of Wisconsin, but hopefully they'll take about a two‑hour break from that and come out and help us out on Wednesday. Q. You faced a tough server from Southern Cal. Micha Hancock is a different animal altogether. You've faced her and you saw what she did to you in Seattle last year. Just talk about her and the challenge of her. KELLY SHEFFIELD: Yeah, both those servers are beastly. They just put so much pace on the ball and so much movement on the ball, and Micha's serve is a little bit different than Bricio's serve is. I don't know what‑‑ it's a great argument as to who is tougher. Our passers aren't going to sit there in the middle of it and try to figure out who's got a better serve. They're both legit. They're as good a server as there's ever been in college volleyball, at least as far back as I've been around. But the more important is you're not going to be in system very much with those servers. Nobody is. And they're going to get some of theirs. They're going to get some aces; it's how do you bounce back from that. Do you come right back in it, are you focused in on this next ball, or are you worrying about what just happened the last ball or the last couple balls? To me that's so critical is just moving on to the next serve. It's an important skill for anybody, but it's so critical for those guys because they can turn one point into eight points just like that. Q. Granted it's a rematch of the National Championship game, but what can an opponent like this, your first one on the Big Ten schedule, do to set the tone for the rest of the conference run? KELLY SHEFFIELD: You know, I think a goal is to win a Conference Championship. You know, if you're wanting to be the best, you're going to have to eventually knock off the best, and there's nobody better than Penn State. You know, a win or a loss isn't everything when you're playing‑‑ it's the first game of 20. Shoot, Penn State won last year and they lost their opening match. They've been the measuring stick, and so I think great athletes and great teams, you want to measure yourself against the best, and we want to see if we've improved and we want to see where we stand right now. We know win or lose after this match, you've still got to find ways to get better. But I think our group was excited about the competition we played last weekend. We're equally excited about who we're going to be playing in two days. Q. Some teams use the word revenge. Other teams hate that word. Is this what this match is about, revenge, or does that have anything to do with it? KELLY SHEFFIELD: I don't know. I mean, whatever gets the players ready to go I'm all right with. I can't imagine it's a real big revenge match for Erin Juley or Romana Kriskova or Kelli Bates. There's a lot of people on their team that weren't really involved, either, last year. I don't know, they beat us all three times we played them last year. At the end of the day, we felt like we were pretty close the last one, but at the end of the day they won nine of the ten sets that we played. I don't think that that's a phrase that our players are using. Maybe a few of them. If that gets them going, that's fine. Like I said, it's about this year's team. It's about this match. It's about one night. It's about continuing to try to get better. We're hoping that it's a match where at the end of it, the fans feel like, man, that was a heck of a battle. Coaching staff certainly is not using revenge. I mean, that's just not how we coach. It's about this match, being prepared for this match, just like every other match that we've got in front of us, and let's execute. Q. You mentioned their coach. How well have you gotten to know Russ over the years, and your appreciation for what he's accomplished at Penn State? KELLY SHEFFIELD: It's unbelievable. I mean, nobody coaches like him. And none of us should try to coach like him. He has been a remarkable at bringing in talent, a great recruiter. He gets his teams to fight like crazy. They are incredibly competitive, and they play their best in the biggest moments. That's been a trademark of his programs over a lot of years. I've asked him a lot of questions as I've been coming up, and he's been extremely gracious in being able to answer and helping my career. He's a great coach. Q. We've heard you single out a lot of performances by individual players this year, but we haven't heard a lot about Lauren Carlini. Do her efforts go without saying? How would you grade how she's begun her sophomore year? KELLY SHEFFIELD: No, I'd never take Lauren for granted. She's obviously a special talent that continues to get better. Great teammate. She's becoming a better leader, and what I mean by that is she's always had a presence on the court, but she's taken on more of a leadership role away from the court. I think she's feeling more comfortable being able to take that on. You know, she's consistently looking for ways to get better, and she's been good this year. You look at our team hitting percentage, and that's climbed up quite a bit from a year ago. A big part of it is how she's running our offense. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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